The Cars Have Eyes Too

Are you being watched when you’re out on the roads? You might be surprised, and we’re not talking about the speed cams either. Actually, it’s worth pointing out that those speed cameras aren’t watching you as much as you think. Most aren’t running because it’s far too expensive to run all the cameras at the same time. So, if you are caught speeding at a fixed camera, it’s really just a spot of bad luck. So, where are the eyes in your car? Well, there are more than you’re probably aware of.

A lot of cars these days have cameras at the front and the rear. Either they are built into the car. Or, they are added on as an accessory but either way, they are watching. This in many ways is a positive. In the past, if you hit a car or just knocked one by accident the driver could claim that you seriously damaged the vehicle. You wouldn’t be able to prove that the damage already existed before you knocked it. These days, you can, if you have a car cam. A car cam is constantly recording everything that is happening on the road and will have a full history or an accident. As such, it’s made things a lot simpler for traffic court cases and minimized scams on the road.

Of course, it’s a two-way street. If you are watching them, you have to also remember that they could be watching you, recording your bad driving. A lot of drivers have certainly been caught driving dangerously due to cyclists sending the footage they captured on their helmet cams to the police.

Sat Navs record your speed when you change lanes and even how you turn corners. They record how fast it takes you to get from point A to point B and whether or not you stop on long journeys. As such, they have a lot of info that in the right hands could get you in quite a bit of trouble. There have certainly been reports of sat nav data being passed on and even sold to insurance companies. Whenever you take out car insurance, your premium will be affected by any data that the company has on you. So, next time you set up a satnav you might want to read the small print that flashes on the screen. What rights do they have over the information they collect about your driving? What rights do you have to keep it private? The answers to these questions might shock you.

Lastly, one year back Wired showed the world how a car could be hacked into and taken control of. They could crash it, reverse on a highway or even just switch off the engine. You might not realize this but most cars these days have that security floor. Or rather, that security feature because it probably isn’t there by accident. While the zombie cars displayed in Fast Eight were a jump five miles from reality, the possibility is based in fact. You could take control of a car on the road if you knew how. Why then does this not happen when a car is hijacked? Simply put, legislation hasn’t yet caught up with technology but it definitely will eventually.